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EFFIGIES and MARKERS

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

On Sept. 21, I interviewed with a reporter from The Arizona Republic newspaper, which is carried online as AZcentral. This is the article that was published on Sept. 25 (that I only found today, Sept. 30).

When I was in high school, I was a teen correspondent for The Arizona Republic and its afternoon sister, The Phoenix Gazette, and wrote numerous articles about my school and classmates. During college, I sold a feature article to their Sunday magazine.

Friday, September 25, 2015

I’ve noticed that when Americans and Canadians travel to the countries where
most of their ancestors lived, we try to express the gut feeling of when we set
foot there for the first time. We may be out on the airport tarmac sniffing
jet exhaust, or riding an air-conditioned tour bus across the countryside, stepping out of a car and catching the scent of flowers and mowed hay, or
standing on the deck of a ferry in the Irish Sea,
but we smell “home.” We feel “home.” It’s a visceral tie to the land.

We may have read classic literature, mined the internet, or seen films and
documentaries of the place, and dreamed of visiting there. But when we
actually arrive, it’s a feeling that’s difficult to describe: peace,
adventure, accelerated heartbeat, some psychic feeling that you
are where you belong, or that you’re grafted back into the vine.

Maybe it’s a psychological reaction. Maybe it’s biological.
Maybe it’s just a dream coming true. Maybe it’s an inherited memory, which
scientists are saying can happen because our ancestors had a traumatizing event that changed their DNA.

"Cooks have another word for it.
"Terroir" is what makes a
loaf of sourdough from San Francisco taste so
different from its cousin in Bordeaux.
The regional microbes, in the soil and air, impart their particular notes to
the bread. You can taste terroir in
your wine, your cheese, and even your chocolate -- all of which are produced
with the help of specialized bacteria [Mycobacterium vaccae]that can vary from town to town." http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/01/how-to-get-high-on-soil/251935/

It’s not about real estate, or a pin on a Google or
TripAdvisor map. What we feel is something that doesn’t change because of an
earth mover cutting down a hill, or a nuclear power plant taking over the farms
where our ancestors grew wheat or apples. When we stand on the grassy floor
of a ruined abbey or the tiled floor of an 800-year-old cathedral, we feel that
connection to the place, a reconciliation of the moment we were ripped away from
our roots.

Tintagel, Cornwall

When we stand at the tomb of someone from our past, we
realize that there was life here once, and there is again, in us. Here lived Love,
Joy, Grief, Fear, Faith.

Ancient languages like Hebrew are rich in visual images. Wrapped in the word shalom are meanings of peace, hello, goodbye, well-being, surely goodness and love (Psalm 23:6), wholeness, completeness, welfare, prosperity, and the deeply satisfied sigh, "Aaaagh." (Learned that from a rabbi!)

And the magical feeling that we’ve come back to another home, a place
where we truly belong. Go back to your roots, maybe for the first time.

Effigy Hunter will help fill in the gaps in your genealogical pedigree, as to where your medieval ancestors were buried, and if an effigy or brass still exists. It's also essential as an adventure travel guide when planning your trip to UK or Europe, because it shows both famous abbeys and churches, and small churches or ruins off the beaten path. Nine hundred names are charted in the book, and there are about 60 photos.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

On this date 395 years ago, September 16, 1620, the ship Mayflower
departed Plymouth, England for the New World, carrying 102 passengers.
Two months earlier, the Speedwell had left Leiden, where the English separatists had lived for more than 10 years. The send-off letter was written by my 9th-great-grandfather, Rev. John
Robinson, their minister. He stayed in Leiden, Netherlands, where he
died in 1625 at age 49. Considering how extreme the Calvinist Puritan
practices became in the next decades, it's amazing to see how
reasonable, practical, loving, and outright kind he was.

Part of his letter-sermon said that they must make every effort to be at peace with all men. This wasn't only about being at peace with God and themselves, nor was it sufficient to keep from being offensive to others, or to be careless in word or deed and then expect others to be gracious and forgiving. ("Chill! I was only joking! Can't you take a joke?") Rather, he says, think about the "strangers" among them --the people joining the expedition who were not part of their shared Christian fellowship in England and the Netherlands-- and remember to witness to them by "brotherly forbearance" and graciousness. In other words, show your Christianity by living it, not preaching it.

John Robinson's words:

Now,
next after this heavenly peace with God and our own consciences, we are
carefully to provide for peace with all men what in us lieth, especially
with our associates. And for that, watchfulness must be had that we neither
at all in ourselves do give, no, nor easily take offense being given by
others. Woe be unto the world for offenses, for though it be necessary
(considering the malice of Satan and man's corruption) that offenses come,
yet woe unto the man, or woman either, by whom the offense cometh, saith
Christ, Matthew 18:7. And if offenses in the unseasonable use of things,
in themselves indifferent, be more to the feared than death itself (as
the Apostle teacheth, 1 Corinthians 9:15) how much more in things simply
evil, in which neither honor of God nor love of man is thought worthy
to be regarded. Neither yet is it sufficient that we keep ourselves by
the grace of God from giving offense, except withal we be armed against
the taking of them when they be given by others. For how unperfect and
lame is the work of grace in that person who wants charity to cover a
multitude of offenses, as the Scriptures speak!But
besides these, there are divers motives provoking you above others to
great care and conscience this way: As first, you are many of you strangers,
as to the persons so to the infirmities one of another, and so stand in
need of more watchfulness this way, lest when such things fall out in
men and women as you suspected not, you be inordinately affected with
them; which doth require at your hands much wisdom and charity for the
covering and preventing of incident offenses that way. And, lastly, your
intended course of civil community will minister continual occasion of
offense, and will be as fuel for that fire, except you diligently quench
it with brotherly forbearance.

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About Me

Christy is an author and editor whose biographical novels and nonfiction book on William and Mary Dyer were published in 2013 and 2014. Her hardcover book "We Shall Be Changed" (2010 Review & Herald) is also available. In September 2015 she published "Effigy Hunter," a nonfiction history and travel guide, and will follow that with a nonfiction book on Anne Hutchinson, then a historical novel set in England in the 1640s-1660s.